What is Factory Farming?

Factory Farming is the practice of raising usually thousands of animals in close confinement and high density with the purpose of producing meat, eggs, or milk in the fastest, most efficient, and cheapest way possible for human consumption. These industrial operations are corporate agribusiness institutions, also called "CAFOS" - concentrated animal feeding operations.

The number of animal farms in the US has decreased drastically over the decades, and while a few companies grew exponentially large, much less people are employed in factory farming today than in the industry's beginnings in the 1920s. One worker now supplies more than 90 consumers (1). The major four food companies in the US produce 81% of cows, 73% of sheep, 57% of pigs, and 50% of chickens (1). 10 billion animals are now killed in US factory farms every year.

US milk production doubled between 1959 and 1990, while the number of dairy cows declined by 40% (26)

Key Characteristics Of Factory Farming

pigs on factory farm

Economies of scale dictate everything. One of the world's largest pig farms in the US holds 500,000 hogs in one Smithfield facility in Utah in tight confinement (33).

Large numbers of animals are usually held indoors in closed confined pens and sheds, and often with physical restraints to control unnecessary movement. The more animals they can crowd into a space, the more profitable it is for the factory farm.

Factory farms are highly standardized for efficiency. Monocultures of animals and feed crops are created to be highly unified through gene manipulation to help yielding consistent production every year. Less diversity and variety of agricultural products make management and regulation of food quality easier.

Growth hormones, genetic engineering, and specific breeding programs are used to create more desirable and consistent animal anatomies, and to stimulate faster growth. This potent chemical cocktail fattens only the animal parts that consumers pay most for.

Huge amounts of antibiotics and pesticides are used to fight the spreading of diseases and bacteria, as farm animals would get sick due to the crowded conditions, dirt, and humidity in the pens.

factory farm cows feed on grains

All factory farm animals - including fish - are fed grains, mostly high-yield corn and soy mixes, which are cheap but low in nutrition (34). The feed can also contain ground-up parts of other animals of the same or other species that did not make it into human food production (35, 36).

Fish farming is one of the fastest growing food producing sectors. More than 30% of sea animals consumed each year are raised on fish farms now (20).

The typical factory farm worker gets low wages, works severe overhours, and won't complain, as he has no rights. More often than not, illegal immigrants are used, as they would cope with all conditions for fear of deportation. Working conditions at factory farms are harsh, dreadful, and hazardous to safety and health of these workers (40).

The meat industry preys on a workforce made up of impoverished illegal immigrants who can never complain about poor working conditions or animal cruelty for fear of being deported (21)

The federal US government subsidizes 35% of feed crop production (41) and US taxpayers paid $56 billion on corn subsidies over the last 12 years (42). 80% of this corn is used for farm animal feed (43). Without these subsidies, industrial farming would be inefficient and much too expensive for producers and consumers.

Factory Farming Health Risks and Environmental Impact

Industrialized animal farming with its continuous quest for efficiency in food production comes at a high price for human health, animal welfare, and the environment. Find out about agriculture industry food facts, health risks, and animal cruelty that may change your outlook on food forever.

Food Facts Endanger Human Health

The agriculture industry uses 70% of all pesticides in the US (28). This and the abundant use of antibiotics to prevent disease and of growth hormones to fatten animals quickly, lead to increased levels of chemical substances in the meat that humans consume. These also cause heightened antibiotic resistance in animals and humans, where they no longer respond to outbreak treatments and require ever stronger doses of drugs to fight bacteria attacks. This practice can also lead directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" (29).

chickens in factory farm shed

Chemical, bacterial, and viral compounds from animal waste can runoff into soil and waterways, from where it immediately affects the human population that gets in touch with it. The main substances are ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorus - along with greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide - that pollute air, land, and water (44).

The meat from corporate factory farms is no longer natural - food facts are that all meats (including chicken and fish) are a concoction of gene-manipulated grains fed to the animals, added by artificial growth hormones.

Intensive farming is creating highly virulent avian flu strains. With the frequent flow of goods within and between countries, the potential for disease spread is high (59).

Food facts are that the USDA allows meat from animals with cancerous lesions and pus-filled wounds to enter the food chain as "USDA pure" (4).

Ammonia levels in factory farms should not exceed 35 parts/million for workers to safely spend 15 minutes in an animal pen. The ammonia levels are often twice these amounts, leading to chronic bronchitis and skin infections in workers (30).

Meat and poultry production have multiplied ever since industrial farming was introduced about 15 years ago. Not surprisingly, deaths from food-borne illness have quadrupled in the US in the last 15 years (12).

courtesy peta: milk with pus in it

The dairy industry knows about the problem with pus in milk and has developed a standard to gauge milk quality called "somatic cell count". The higher the somatic cell count, the more pus in the milk. To be considered healthy for human consumption, the somatic cell count in milk should not exceed 200 million per liter. In the US food facts are that the average somatic cell count is 322 million per liter across all states (39).

"With the advent of modern slaughter technologies, there are about 50 points during meat processing where cross-contamination can occur. At the end of the line, the chickens are no cleaner than if they had been dipped into a toilet." (38)

With nearly 36 injuries or illnesses for every 100 workers, meat packing is the most dangerous job in the US. Chances for suffering an injury or illness in a meat plant are six times greater than in a coal mine(12).

Some publications make a link between violence toward animals and violence toward humans. It is stated that working in a slaughterhouse will dull one's sense of compassion toward both animals and people, including loved ones (12).

Factory Farming Jeopardizes Animal Health

Animals in very dense confined environments build ideal breeding grounds for lethal viruses and contagious diseases. Due to the gene-manipulated uniformity of the confined animals, viruses are spreading easily and face almost no resistance.

pigs standing in their own manure

Confined factory farm animals often stand or lie in their own manure, next to sick or even dead animals, and with largely untreated wounds, as veterinary care is deemed too costly for these "food products".

Farm animal feed is a far cry from their natural feed: it contains high amounts of rich corn and soy, rendered parts of other animals (of same and other species), animal waste, drugs, chemicals, metals, and plastic. As a result, particularly grass-eating cows suffer greatly from digestive and liver problems.

Animals' immune systems have weakened extremely due to overbreeding and growth hormones that create deformed bodies. This is animal cruelty as the animals' legs can no longer support the unnatural heavy weight of their upper bodies (2).

30-50% of US dairy cows suffer from mastitis due to a weakened immune system and over-milking. Mastitis is a painful bacterial udder infection that produces blood and pus, which often lands in the milk. This is so common that the dairy industry created a specific council to address this problem (10).

cow with infected udder from mastitis

Other very common cow diseases are Bovine Leukemia, Bovine Immunodeficiency Virus, and Milk Fever from calcium deficiency - as dairy cows' constant birth cycles deplete their bodies of more calcium than they can replenish with food.

Pigs often suffer from porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, swine influenza, and salmonellosis, due to the filthy living conditions in factory farming where they are forced to live in their own urine, feces, vomit, and sometimes amid corpses of dead animals.

Media around the US concludes: The way America produces meat, milk and eggs is unsustainable, creates significant risks to public health from antibiotic resistance and disease, damages the environment, and supports unnecessary animal cruelty.

The high levels of ammonia and toxic gases in the animal warehouses often lead to severe respiratory disease, as the animals spend weeks or months in this environment without ever breathing fresh air. This animal cruelty leads to huge mortality rate of chickens, but farm industry calculations found it is more important to grow the biggest birds and ignore mortality (30).

70% of pigs on factory farms have pneumonia by the time they are sent to the slaughterhouse (31). More than 25% of pigs suffer from mange due to their filthy living conditions (32).

Veterinary care for individual animals is not profitable, so when they fall sick they are left to fend for themselves without any treatment.

Factory Farming Damages the Environment

courtesy USDA: factory farm manure runoff

Food animals on factory farming facilities produce an enormous amount of waste. A dairy farm with 2,500 cows produces as much waste as a city of 411,000 people (60).

Food facts are that there are NO regulations for the treatment of animal waste from factory farming, which contains methane and nitrous oxide gases - both many times more toxic and warming than CO2. Liquid animal waste often spills over from holding lagoons into local soil and waterways.

Fish farming is called "aquafarming", and this squanders natural resources too - it can take 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce just 1 pound of farmed fish. Aquafarming operations pollute the environment with tons of fish feces, antibiotic-laden fish feed, and diseased fish carcasses (20).

Factory Farming Animal Cruelty

Video "Meet your Meat" from PETA

All farmed chicken, pigs, and turkeys live their entire life in dark extremely confined spaces, often with no room to turn around or lie down (2).

It is animal cruelty that all farm animals are prevented or restricted from their natural behavior, socializing, and exercising in fresh air that would be crucial to the animals' well being.

Animals often have to stand or lie in their own waste for long periods, and are subjected to intense levels of ammonia and toxic gases where humans can only enter with facial masks for a very short period of time.

Weak and injured animals are often left to fend for themselves with open wounds or infections, without food or water. They wait in pain for a slow death, as veterinary care is considered too costly for individual animals. Many cases of animal cruelty are documented where still living animals have been thrown away as trash, as they were too weak to stand-up or walk.

Sir Paul McCartney once said: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be vegetarian." Many former slaughterhouse workers would agree when faced with the animal cruelty that is legal and accepted procedure in food plants.

Most animals are fed synthetic growth hormones to fatten them fast in unnatural ways. They suffer from broken bones, heart attacks, seizures, viruses and other diseases, as their legs and organs are crushed from the heavy body parts that consumers prefer (2).

dead pigs on factory farm

Psychological stress and trauma are rampant and amount to animal cruelty, as animals witness the slaughter, dying, or injury of companions. Self mutilation is frequent as these intelligent animals develop signs of insanity due to boredom, frustration, and total lack of stimulation.

The lifespan of factory farming animals is radically reduced, and that also includes dairy cows, breeding sows, and egg-laying hens.

Humane killing methods are often ignored to keep the production line running, and many animals are improperly sedated or stunned before being scorched in boiling water, throat-slit, beheaded, or bolt-shut. If these methods don't manage to kill them, the animal cruelty intensifies beyond belief, as they are dismembered piece by piece, often still conscious, on the fast-moving production line.

Excellent resources about the toll that factory farming takes on human health, animal welfare, and the environment

Here is another excellent website that dives into more details and provides extensive information about the questionable practices of factory farming and who its winners and losers are: FactoryFarming.com.

The website gives you a even better understanding of the various CAFO types, factory farming's impact on the environment, and the pathogens and health concerns that are introduced into our daily food chain by the miserable living conditions that farm animals have to endure on factory farms.

Book Image & Title

Book Review

Author Jonathan Safran Foer was between meat-eating and vegetarianism when he undertook the challenge to make a sensible choice for the diet of his future family. What he discovered while visiting factory farms is a compelling and sobering story about the human and environmental cost of modern food production.

Known for his humoristic style as novelist, Foer's book Eating Animals is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the impact that factory farming has on their own life and the environment we live in.

In Animal Factory: The Looming Thread of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment, author and journalist David Kirby describes the inevitable impact that nowadays' food production system has on people who live close to these mass animal factories.

With a style reminiscent of mystery thrillers, Kirby portraits the stories of three unlikely activists whose lives were dramatically changed by the massive environmental hazards resulting from nearby factory farms. Follow them in their battle against big agribusiness and their elected officials, who are more concerned about industry interests than public health.

Written by a cattle rancher who won’t eat meat anymore, the compelling book Mad Cowboy by Howard F. Lyman is an eye-opening essay about the deadly impact that the cattle and livestock industries have on our well-being - physically and mentally.

A former believer in the system who has raised cattle in the fourth generation, Lyman takes a courageous plunge against powerful corporations that collectively contribute to more American diseases than all other causes combined: the meat and dairy industries.

John Robbins' first book Diet For A New America is widely recognized as the bible for a humane lifestyle that questions our dependence on animals for food.

Robbins educates us about the misguided belief that animal foods are important for human health, and he dispels the myths about the food industry's brainwashing tactics to make us believe in happy cows and humanely treated farm animals. John Robbins dissects the detrimental impact that factory farming has on human and environmental health, while reflecting on moral questions that we need to re-evaluate in the light of the book's alarming facts.

Disclaimer: The information on this website is not intended as medical advice. It is solely based on the experience and information researched and gathered from reputable sources by Ina Mohan. Please consult with your certified healthcare provider to ensure that you can safely follow the healthy eating guidelines provided on this website. Ina Mohan encourages you to research and verify all health and diet information that you receive, particularly from sources that may have a commercial interest in disputing the healing capabilities of the human body with wholesome nutrition.